Author Archives: D R

Lucky peanuts in high school baseball

Background on informant: Informant is a senior at USC, studying international relations. He is from the Bay Area and lived and studied in Russia for a year.

Informant: My high school baseball team had lucky peanuts. We would only win if my coach bought these specific peanuts for the dugout. I’d recognize the jar but couldn’t tell you what kind they were. They didn’t improve our performance. I’m not sure why we did it. The funny thing is usually 90 percent of them would be eaten by the bench before the first rotation ended so the people who were playing didn’t really eat the peanuts.

Analysis: This belief is interesting because it is not grounded in any specific proof — a winning record, health, etc… — but appears to be deeply held nonetheless. The informant himself concedes that the people who the peanuts were supposed to benefit, ideally the players on the field who have control over their performance, aren’t even the ones eating the peanuts. The belief also sheds light on the broader baseball culture since peanuts are prevalent at professional games. Perhaps the high school players are trying to emulate the professionals, looking up to them in some sense by adopting rituals that are associated with professional games. Moreover, the fact that the informant could recognize the jar but cannot tell you the brand of peanut suggests that he remembers the performance of this ritual, as he would know it if he saw it.

Break On 2…

Background on informant: Informant is a senior at USC, studying international relations. She is involved in many student organizations, including Break On 2, a dance troupe.

Informant: At the end of every Break On 2 Practice or before a show, we’ll always do our cheer and count to three and do whatever. But since it’s on two, we’ll break on two. I don’t know how long we’ve been doing it but it’s definitely been a five or ten year thing. I think it started a long time ago. They teach it to you when they first join the team. The president of the org. teaches it to the new members when you are allowed onto the team.

Analysis: I found this folklore interesting because it serves as both a custom and a form of initiation. It’s how, this informant says, new members are brought into the group when they are “allowed onto the team.” At the same time, it is also something they do at the end of practice or before a show, presumably as good luck and to show community, that they are in it together, which is perhaps why it is important that the folklore is linked to initiation. The folklore, in this way, provides a space to express community and to belong in the group. It was also interesting that the informant did not know how it originated except that it had been going on for several years, suggesting that it is something passed down again and again.

“Be tough about it”

Background on informant: Informant is a senior at USC, studying international relations. She is involved in many student organizations,

Informant: My father played soccer forever so he’s always tough about anything pain-related. He has a very high pain tolerance. Regardless, as a kid when there was anything wrong, he would say, “be tough about it.” That’s the phrase for everything. You get hurt, etc… He would hit you in the forehead in a joking way and that was a distraction from whatever thing it was. It could be literally anything if we were complaining. I say it to other people. Now it’s like a phrase.

Analysis: I found this piece of folklore to be compelling because it sheds light on how folklore is performed, taught, habituated to a certain extent and passed down. The informant, who does not have as high of pain tolerance as her father, is told again and again to tough it out when there is a problem and now it’s a folk saying that she reports performing when in the company of others. I also thought it was interesting that the informant has such a personal connection and personal associations, the way she talks about how her father interacts (jokingly hitting her forehead), for a phrase that is somewhat banal and self-evident. It suggests that this piece of folklore, in addition, to serving a person in social interactions is also personal and connects her to the person who first performed it for her.

“It’s a tie”

Background on informant: Informant is a senior at USC studying computer science. She comes from a Chinese family and speaks Chinese.

Informant: One of my best friends Hannah told me this today. We were really bored. We were talking about ties and so she tells me this joke, which goes like this:

At a formal event, roll your tie up into a little bundle right before the knot.

Then ask someone which of the two flaps will unravel first.

After they guess, let it unravel and go, “it’s a tie!

The best jokes are the punny ones. I guess it shows that humans really like the smallest things and if it will make them a little happy, it’s worth talking about.

Analysis: I liked this joke because it plays with language and in a sense then is idiomatic to speakers of that language. In this way, it differentiates who belongs to a group and who doesn’t. Moreover, the folklore was clearly spontaneous in the fact that it was completely associational to a conversation about ties. It was a spur of the moment joke told to the informant and later retold to me, folklore passed along and re-packaged as folklore. I also found interesting the circumstances in which the performance arose. The informant said she was “really bored,” perhaps suggesting that the joke was told to provide some sort of respite from the boredom of the everyday, which is a chief function of performance.

‘guten Appetit’

Background on informant: Informant is a senior at USC, studying international relations. She is involved in many student organizations,

Informant: My dad’s side of the family is all German so whenever we would go to my grandmother’s house for dinner we would always have to say the normal dinner greeting things that are part of German culture. It’s basically saying thank you for the food and let’s eat. I haven’t said it in five years so I forgot the term.

Analysis: The informant later informed me that the term is “guten Appetit,” a relatively simple and self-explanatory phrase that means in English: enjoy your meal. To her however, this was folklore because she does not speak German and learned to say the phrase through a family, repeating it as a ritual before a dinner at her grandmother’s house. The most interesting part of this piece of folklore was that the informant forgot the substance of the folklore — what it is she actually said — but remembered the folklore and its purpose. Thus, the folklore for her was largely symbolic. It represents something and has meaning and value detached from the words that comprise it. Perhaps this is why folklore must be performed and is distinguished from authored literature. In essence, the informant remembered the performance but forgot the script. But that’s not what mattered for her. What mattered is what the folklore meant and what it represented, and she got it pretty much correct. “It’s basically saying thank you for the food and let’s eat” is not too far off from “enjoy your meal.”